We now know the source of the leak that
permitted the Guardian to reveal information
about our government’s action, information which people across the political spectrum
are acknowledging to be in the public interest.

The individual who has forsaken a
lucrative career, very likely sacrificed his freedom of movement, and perhaps
even imperilled his personal liberty and physical safety, is
Edward Snowden, described by the Guardian
as “a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee
of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last
four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen
and Dell”.

Although the keepers of convention
wisdom within our behemoth of a national security apparatus are already working
to portray Snowden as a threat to national security and someone who sought to
profit from his position within the cloak-and-dagger world which is at the
forefront of the shadow wars the United States wages across the world, Snowden’s
decision to make his identity public speaks to deeper motives, which become clear
in a moving interview with the Guardian.

Snowden explained, “I really want the
focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger
among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live
in...My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their
name and that which is done against them ... I don’t want to live in a world
where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and
creativity”.

The security “experts” within our
government are already lining up to attack Snowden and Glenn Greenwald (the Guardian journalist who broke the
story).Snowden’s own company released
a statement saying that their employee’s actions represent “a grave
violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm”, values which,
public observers can only imagine must be diametrically opposed to our own if
they involve deceit and invasions of privacy.Republican Congressman Peter King, an ardent supporter of the Irish
Republican Army, called for Snowden to be extradited to the United States from
Hong Kong, where he fled to make his revelations.Steven Clemons, a foreign affairs journalist,
reported “listening
to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on NSA stuff should
be disappeared”, exhibiting that there is a brutal and violent mentality lurking
behind the more urbane defences of our intelligence agencies.

Republican Congressman, Mike Rogers (of the
House Intelligence Committee) told
CNN that “Greenwald ‘doesn’t have a clue how this thing works’, referring
to the U.S. government’s surveillance techniques approved by his committee”.I submit that Rogers and other thugs like him
don’t get something else: how a couple of little “things” called democracy and
accountability work.Nor do they have
even an elementary grasp of the costs to our democracy of constructing such an
invasive security apparatus, or of the damage to our moral and material economy
done by the wars in the name of which this program has been created.The fact that Rogers sat on information about
this massive breach of our civil liberties, and the mounting outrage from the
public which has followed its exposure, suggests that he and others with
foreknowledge of this program are unfit to serve the public and have neglected
to discharge their responsibilities to their constituents.

Rogers was echoed
by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, who criticised the
media’s “rush to publish”, claiming that the workings of the agencies he
oversees could be jeopardised.But
imagine if people within the intelligence services and members of the media had
found the same spine during the run-up to the war on Iraq, and subjected the
case for that war to similar scrutiny.The lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would
have been saved, to say nothing of the trillions which will be expended on a
war constructed on an edifice of lies told by our elected representatives and
their appointees.Perhaps Clapper and
those in the intelligence world should reconsider the necessity of this program,
the secrecy of which requires the muzzling of the press and the hoodwinking of
the public they serve.Censorship is not
an acceptable attribute of a democratic and open society.

Rogers went
on to argue that the whistleblower “absolutely...should be prosecuted”.But stop to think what it would mean if whistleblowers—these
days our sole source of information about the workings of our military,
executive, and intelligence agencies—were stifled.Men and women of conscience should be
encouraged to share abuses of the public trust rather than prosecuted,
harassed, and defamed for their actions.And yet our President, who once promised to run the most “transparent
and ethical administration in history”, is treating whistleblowers as enemies
of the state.

Through the spectre of his
transformation of the American national security apparatus and his prosecution
of any number of horrific wars, our President has mutated into a pathetic,
craven version of the inspiring, righteous man who five years ago gave our
country reason to hope that we could turn the page on an era which spurned the
public interest, ignored the public good, shredded the public’s rights, and killed
in the public’s name.I think that as we
went to bed on election even in 2008, none of us would have imagined that five
years later we would see Barack Obama as a president who has expanded and perfected
the dark arts of the security state enshrined under George W. Bush.

We are fortunate, as a nation which
sometimes seems to have misplaced its moral compass in the bleak post-9/11 terrain,
to count amongst our citizens the likes of Edward Snowden who can help us to
chart our way back to sunnier climes worthy of the stories we like to tell
about our country’s identity and mission in the world.His actions required great moral courage, and
are the stuff of the stories we should hope to be able to tell subsequent
generations about our rediscovery of our purpose.

“I had been looking around for leaders”,
Snowden recounted
when describing his mounting frustration with the manhandling of our democracy
performed by the intelligence services at the behest of the Bush and Obama
administrations.“But then”, he
continued, “I realised that leadership is about being the first to act”.

It will be some time before we know just
how much Snowden’s patriotism and commitment to the public good has cost him
and his family.But in the meantime we
should do our best to honour that sacrifice by demanding accountability from our
government and the dismantling of the security state that has been built up
secretly before our credulous and trusting eyes.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I work as an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research. This blog also appears on the website of the Redding Record Searchlight.